Yesterday marked 14 years since my first day of massage school out in Port Townsend, WA.

I spent a little time reflecting on what I’ve learned from having my hands on countless bodies of all different shapes, sizes, and levels of health over the years. In random order here are some of my observations and things I wish my clients knew.

#1 Massage is a collaboration.

As experienced of a body worker as I am – I can’t force you to relax.

We have to work in partnership with one another.

It is my job to create a safe, calming space. I approach our time together with as much presence and reverence as I can and treat you with kindness, gentleness and respect when you are on my table. I use any of the modalities I’ve learned over the years to help improve your range of motion, reduce your stress and calm the nervous system.

YOU have a job too.

Show up 5 minutes before your appointment time to give yourself a chance to transition from your fast paced life into a more meditative head space. Communicate your needs both before and during the session. BREATHE. Taking a deep breath when we approach an area of tension helps the body let go. Let yourself be taken care of. People who try to “help” me in the massage by lifting their legs, arms or heads are actually working against the process by engaging and tensing the very muscles we are working to soften.

I had a regular client who after a few months of coming for massage remarked that she was never able to fully turn her mind off or get into that blissful, peaceful massage space we all crave. After a bit of exploring I discovered that she had been so tired in the afternoons that she was having a quad espresso before she came for her appointments!

She was speeding herself up to come here and relax. No wonder she could never quite go there. :)

Help me help you and we will achieve much greater results in our time together.

I’m breaking all the rules with this post. It’s a day early for one. Wednesday already feels like it’s going to get away from me – so I’m grabbing this free moment and squeezing every ounce out of it to make sure I blog my photos. For two – though I initiated the “let’s shoot with the same lens” idea and agreed to shoot with my 50 – I didn’t do it. My 35 came in the mail and I just had to give it a test run. I’m really loving it – and am so glad you nudged the project a bit because it totally rejuvenated me. Thanks lady!! :) My photo walk wound up being a few different days – from the first image made with my 35, to a trip to the beach – the one summer thing I’ve done this year!!, and one from an inspiring portrait shoot I did today. Here you go! Love you. Can’t wait to see yours. :)

The first image from the new 35 …. yay!! Wide open and sharp.

Beach cottage playfulness. Love the fluff container turned flower vase. When is the last time you had fluff? When I lived out West I met people who had never heard of it.

Photographer HEAVEN!! The perfectly blue sky turned cloudy and I began to salivate! Can you relate?

I bid so long to my beach buddies and moved on down the road. I just had to chase the stormy moodiness.

Lastly, and respectfully – one image from a recent portrait session. Carey just had a double mastectomy and we are going to document the changes, the scars, the recovery. She’s given me permission to share all the images – which I will do one day. It was an honor for me to do this with her – and she said it was very cathartic for her. ♥♥♥

Lydia is a photographer in NYC and I’m in CT. We decided a while back that we wanted to work on a project together – and we’re still figuring out what that is. Here is a LINK to my first post which explains the idea and here is a LINK to Lydia’s last post in the project.

Lydia and I are moving our project in a new direction. Here is her post explaining the idea and revealing her first picture – to which I am responding below.

Here’s the idea. Last week she took a picture and posted it on her blog. This week I am responding to her picture with words (I am challenging myself to keep it to twenty-two words each week) – which will be the beginning of what we hope will be an unfolding story – and posting my picture – to which she will respond the next week.

While the ingredients for her amazing cranberry apple chutney were simmering, she wondered what the ingredients for an amazing life would be.

I know you may post a day or two late this week – and I am posting a day early – so we balance each other out. I’m in the office at the studio and despite the fact that I have the heat cranked to 75 it is still cold in here. This is one of those rooms that is going to stay hot all summer and cold all winter. Lake Street Dive radio is playing on Pandora in the other room and I’m forcing myself to do this blog post because I have time right now.

I’ve been feeling a little “bleh” this week so it was the perfect time for us to explore “photography as therapy”. Your post from last week was inspiring. It reminded me, as it did you, of some of the things we loved about photography in the beginning. Going on photo walks was definitely an outlet and meditation for me. It didn’t matter if anyone ever saw the images – something worked through me and I’d always feel more energized after. That’s what happened with these too. I was feeling sort of down when I started my walk on Main Street and by the end my mood had completely shifted. I think “photo walks” should be an added tool in Art Therapy. It makes your forget yourself.

I don’t think I’d normally share any of these images. It was SO cold out – my fingers almost fell off – that there was little thought put into composition, etc. I was just looking for our chosen colors. Blobbity blob – they are what they are and I’m sharing them with you. That little dog is named Tilly. She was a rescue and I fell in love with her. She was behind the counter in a shop I went into (to get out of the bitter cold) and came out to say hello. The owner said she never comes out to see anyone (she was abused by her past owners). I think she wanted a massage. All animals ask me for one. ;)

Happy day after Thanksgiving. How was yours? I spent the day at Donna’s and got to see (not touch) our new (second) cousin. He is SO cute!! Seriously adorable with little man lips and lots of squishy-ness. We weren’t allowed to pick him up yet. I think it would have been a little much with so many people wanting a piece of him.

So – I totally failed on taking pictures this week – except for this one quick one yesterday morning. We all brought something this year and Donna & Kent cooked the turkey. My assignment was 10 pounds of mashed potatoes. I thought I’d at least do a before and after – but no. I put the taters on to boil, left the room … and came back to a total toxic, plastic smelling, nausea inducing smell. Not sure if it was the bottom of one of the pans or on the burner … but the kitchen was a vat of stink and all I wanted to do was finish making the dish and get out of there – so no after picture came to be.

It’s rainy here this morning and all I want to do is crawl back in bed with a good book. Instead I’m in the studio getting ready to do my first massage of the day and finishing up my post to you. What are we going to shoot next week? Maybe our readers can pick the “sub topic” for us?

As you know, at least I think you know, everything I owned was in a storage unit for three years (after I’d been laid off, traveled, etc). That time was a great reminder of how little we really need to live. My life was still full and filled with laughter and love even without all my junk. When I moved into the studio and got all that stuff out of storage I was almost overwhelmed by some of it – AND so excited to see a few of the things I’d forgotten about. This candlestick is one. About 14 years and 3000 miles ago I worked with a young guy who was trying to figure out what to with his life. He really loved working with wood – but his family/friends made him feel that doing any sort of work that involved artistry wasn’t a smart economical move. We had long talks about it and I passionately insisted he need to follow his heart and talents. No regrets. One morning he showed up for his shift with this candlestick. He’d been up all night making it and had come in to tell me he was quitting his job as he’d been accepted at a woodworking school near the Redwood Trees in CA. I was so proud of him – and inspired by his courage! The candlestick is a treasured object in my home. It reminds me of a wonderful soul, of taking risks and of how much we can be impacting other lives without ever knowing it.

The Muppets are just goofy and they make me smile. When I lived out in WA I worked at a Starbucks while going to massage school. These little guys were an item that we sold and when they went on sale I scooped them up. They remind me to not take life so seriously and are a throw back to my childhood. I did grow up watching them on t.v. (ugh, that ages me).

Lastly, this lovely little piece of pottery. A gift from a very talented friend who makes jewelry out in Portland, OR. Something about it makes me feel calm. The card behind it came from the Farnsworth Art Museum up in Maine. A friend and I had gone there to see the Wyeth collection – pictured is a painting that was done at the Olson house. The light in his paintings, along with the soft, muted – sort of grayed out colors – also go a long way to soothe my soul. Also – and I didn’t get anything of his – we saw an exhibit by Paul Caponigro when we were there. He’s not someone either of us had known about. He was a landscape photographer who worked with people like Minor White. He’d done work called “The Hidden Presence of Places” that I got chills from. I felt a calling to his work and to follow a similar path. So, even though the card is a painting from Wyeth – it also brings me back to Caponigro and reminds me to keep growing in our shared craft so that one day I can follow that call I felt. Do you think photography is a craft by the way? Or an art?

I want this first post to be a little bit of an “aside” to our readers to help them understand what we are doing and why.

Lydia and I are cousins with a 22 year age difference between us. In addition to the generation gap, we’ve never lived close enough to one another to bond as much as we might like to. We are both creatively bent and having little love affairs with our cameras. Lydia went to college for photography right out of high school and I taught myself after the age of 40. The idea of collaborating on a project together has come up on several of our last visits and today is the day to begin! Yay!!

One of my ideas had been to explore our perspectives on the world. Pick a subject – each of us shoot it – and learn from each other. I’ve been reflecting lately on how much the way the world sees us can affect how we see the world and how we value self. I’m curious to find out where our commonalities are – how much do our shared family genes shapes us; and where our differences are. (And I love the differences – they open your eyes to new worlds) Factually speaking: I am the oldest cousin – Lydia is the youngest. She is tall and blonde and grew up in the 90’s. I am shorter, take after the Italian side of my family – and grew up in the 70’s/80’s. She’s following her passions straight out of the gate. I’ve come to mine after travelling long, meandering roads in life.

Our project is to photograph a sense of place with the guiding force being to photograph the places where we feel at home. This will give us a chance to get to know one another more intimately and stretch our creative and photographic muscles. We will be posting on Friday’s – each to our own space and linking back to one another. There will be one to several images with a few words.

I encourage you to check out Lydia’s Website and FB page. She is a model, artist and advocate who has only just begun to make her mark on the world. She’s full of energy and is driven to find ways to support the people in her community through their struggles in life. One of the things I admire about Lydia is her willingness to jump in and explore the things she feels passionate about. With a big heart and a willingness to be bold I know she will positively impact all she comes across.

What do you think Lydia? Are you as happy as I am that this has begun? I’m really looking forward to seeing your post next Friday.

Love, love, love,

T

P.S. Something I didn’t even consider until after creating this first post. I shoot with a Nikon and Lydia with a Cannon. Mines been dropped in water and sand and all the pieces on the back are falling off. Lydia got herself a lovely new camera as a graduation present. They kind of match us – I’m older and starting to fall apart and Lydia is “fresher” if you will. ;-)